Northern Velebit National Park
The Northern Velebit National Park (Croatian: Nacionalni park Sjeverni Velebit) is a national park in Croatia that covers 109 km2 of the northern section of the Velebit mountain, the largest mountain in Croatia. Because of the abundant variety of this part of the Velebit range and its authenticity, the area was upgraded from its classification as a nature reserve to a national park in 1999, and started work in September the same year.
The whole of the Velebit mountain is a nature park, a lesser category of nature conservation. Another national park on Velebit is the Paklenica on its southern side.
The park
The park reserve is protected and visitors cannot pass through except on designated trails. Inside the reserve there are the Visibaba (Galanthus) botanical reserve, with an abundance of the endemic Croatian subspecies of Sibiraea altaiensis, and the Zavižan-Balinovac-Velika kosa botanical reserve, famous for its outstanding collection of species of mountain flora. Inside the reserve there is the well known Velebit Botany Garden, founded by pharmacology professor and botanist Fran Kušan in 1967.
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